


best friends without benefits

by lizbobjones



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Car Sex, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Sexual Frustration, i have no idea what i'm doing.jpg, no new canon has happened yet to stop me, post-season 12 ish, presumably canon divergent, the author cockblocks the characters for 20k words, written in the season 11-12 hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7539388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s nearing three a.m. and they’ve been on the road a long time. Sam’s been asleep in the back seat since eleven. Giving up and handing the wheel over to Cas and letting the guy who doesn’t sleep drive had seemed like a good idea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo this has a slightly shorter one-shot version of the first scene on my tumblr but you may notice this is... somehow... more.

“Dean.”

“Hmm?”

“I know you’re awake. I can tell when you’re watching me.”

Dean opens his eye more than the crack he’d been sneaking his thousandth glance at Cas through.

“I can’t believe you’re driving my car,” Dean mutters sleepily. It’s nearing three a.m. and they’ve been on the road a long time. Sam’s been asleep in the back seat since eleven. Giving up and handing the wheel over to Cas and letting the guy who doesn’t sleep drive had seemed like a good idea.

Cas glances over and frowns at him before quickly looking back at the miles of empty, straight road stretching ahead of them, still driving like a dork, Dean thinks. “If you’re worried about me crashing the car, I won’t,” he says grumpily. “The next town is still at least two hours away, but I could wake Sam and let him drive.”

“’S not that,” Dean mutters, sinking lower in the passenger seat and shifting around to try and get comfortable, dancing on the edge of sleep. He closes his eyes again, hoping to trick himself into sleeping.

“Then what is it?” Cas asks, still sounding resentful about his driving being so closely monitored.

Dean cracks his eyelids apart before he can help himself, and stares across the front seat to Cas behind the wheel. It shouldn’t have been a big deal but it really is; watching Cas resolutely staring down the empty road, both hands on the wheel, determined to bear them safely on their way with all his usual intensity, to the point of absurdity about how seriously he’s taking the task, and there’s just something about him being the one driving Dean’s car…

All drugged up with the kind of tiredness from hitting the road in a kind of driven-out-of-town-after-a hunt-way and then driving non-stop for twelve hours, followed by two more hours drifting right on the cusp of sleeping if not for watching Cas, Dean isn’t really paying much attention to his own mouth.

“S’ kinda hot.”

There’s one of the heaviest silences in his life as Dean slowly registers what he said and he jerks awake like he’d been slapped.

At least, he thinks somewhat hysterically as he meets a gaze boggling at him in shock, he finally made Cas take his eyes off the road for more than a second.

Cas glances away and adjusts the car with an embarrassed twitch of the steering wheel, moments before she could disappear off the road and end their suffering.

No, Sam was in the car. It wouldn’t be fair to him to die for their awkwardness. Cas did the right thing there.

Dean helplessly turns to watch the road as well, almost as soon as Cas appears to work up the nerve to speak again and break the silence.

“It’s okay, Dean. I’ve known of your attraction to me for some time. You’re not particularly subtle.”

Dean’ head cracks around to look at him so quickly he think he pulls a muscle in his neck. “What does that mean?” he hisses. He makes a paranoid glance at Sam. Unless his brother’s skilful enough at eavesdropping to act a slack mouth and soft whistling from his nose, he’s still out for the count. “You know what, never mind. If we have to have this talk, can we have it in private?”

“Of course,” Cas says, and just like that Dean is plunged into the _longest_ awkward silence of his life.

Cas turns his attention back to the road and Dean is left to agonise in silence, now completely beyond the ability to sleep.

*

They arrive back at the Bunker sometime after dawn. Dean gets out and slams the car door to wake Sam up, rather petulantly; if nothing else jealous that he got an uninterrupted night’s sleep and didn’t just experience the most uncomfortable drive ever first hand.

“I’m going to bed,” he announces, catching Cas staring at him across the top of the car, a steady, significant look that makes Dean flush deeply. “I couldn’t catch a wink with Grandma here behind the wheel.”

Cas breaks the stare to roll his eyes, and Dean takes that moment of normality to head for the Bunker door as fast as he can without appearing to be fleeing the scene. He’s safely down the stairs before he even hears Sam or Cas following. He’s half tempted to go sleep on the floor in one of the store rooms or dungeon to get guaranteed private anti-social sulking in but he figures if he’s going to lie awake hating himself he may as well do it from a comfortable bed.

When he falls face-first into his pillow, he is asleep within moments.

*

A gentle but persistent knocking at the door eventually drags Dean back from the land of nod.

“What?”  he grumbles, rolling over stiffly. Groggy still, he notices that he never even got his boots off earlier.

“It’s me,” Cas’s voice drifts through the door, sounding as steadfast as ever.

Dean has mumbled an okay before he realises that voice (as ever) is a trap, luring him into forgetting the horrors of their last conversation with its familiar, comforting sound. Clearly only able to read Dean’s mind when it inconveniences him (Dean has never been sure if he can or not) Cas ignores Dean’s panic and walks right into the room anyway, and they blink at each other for nearly a minute. Dean is frozen in place half out of bed, one foot on the floor, fully dressed – he hopes Cas doesn’t think he was about to try and sneak off.

“Uh –” Dean eventually says, swinging his other leg around so he’s at least got both feet on the floor, not sure what words are meant to come after.

He’s saved from finding them as Cas finally speaks – “I was in favour of letting you sleep for another hour, but Sam told me to go wake you. I didn’t think it would be wise to tell him why it may be awkward.”

Dean scrubs his hand over his face, trying to wake himself up enough to articulate some of his thoughts from The Interminable Car Ride. The sudden pounding of his heart and burst of adrenaline from even thinking them helps. “Aw, no, it… It doesn’t have to be awkward. We, uh… probably should have had this conversation a long time ago.”

Cas finally gives a more relaxed smile. “ _When_?” he asks, and Dean has never been more relieved to hear Cas’s sarcasm.

He shrugs, awkward. “Okay. Fair point. But last night… I was just tired, and, you know, Sam in the back seat and all. I’m not avoiding you… just… time and a place for this.”

He realises Cas is going to hover just inside the door pretty much indefinitely so he pats the space next to him on the bed. To his relief, Cas crosses the room and sits. Dean glances over, almost shy, feeling strangely awed to have Cas at such a close distance that finding some way to reach out and touch him – bumping knees, shifting his hand to brush Cas’s, just _reaching_ for him – seems easier to do than not. He holds himself back for the moment, still uncertain just for having not asked. He’s hoping he’s reading it right that Cas is as nervous and hopeful as Dean feels… After so many conflicting fears have held Dean back over the years, it’s almost novel to have fear of rejection showing up late to the party.

Also, he has a point of pride to defend. “What did you mean last night about me not being subtle?” he blurts before he can find the tactful way into this conversation.

Cas looks at him in a steady, concerned way that has Dean squirming. It takes him so long to speak Dean is sure he is being intentionally held hostage over that comment. “Do I need to remind you of everything suggestive you’ve ever said to or about me in my presence? Or should I skip to describing how flustered you get and why?”

“I – uh… No, I – I think we’re good.”

Cas smirks at him, beautiful and infuriating up close.

“Well what about you?” Dean asks. “I didn’t know you – you…” he trails off. Considering all those supposed times he’s hit on Cas, he feels like it’s always been met with an inscrutable stare or confused squint. You know, if he’d been hitting on Cas in the first place.

He can admit to himself he may be a bit late to defend that point.

But if Cas has known all along how much Dean is crushing on him, without flirting back… The thought that haunted Dean all through the end of that long car ride had been, _would Cas even want to reciprocate_? Maybe Dean has been reading his devotion wrong the entire time, if Cas hasn’t been oblivious. Just tactfully avoiding dealing with unwanted attention.

“I’ve wondered myself,” Cas says. “More often in recent years, though, since I am no longer accountable to Heaven, and have experienced so much more of humanity since the first years after we met…”

Dean’s heart is beating hard and fast as Cas talks the point through so slowly, addressed almost to himself as if he needs to hear it first. Dean almost jumps when Cas finally turns to look him in the eye again.

“I know you have made it very clear that you think of me as a friend and nothing more…”

Dean’s heart crashes down into his boots, disappointment warring with the sudden pain over realising how he might have hurt Cas. He wants to argue but the words stick in his throat and Cas is still talking:

“…But I have frequently reflected, since learning of the concept, that I would be amenable to the compromise of “best friends with benefits” or –”

“Don’t do the air quotes” Dean hears himself saying from the verge of nearly passing out with panic.

“- “Fuck buddies”” Cas finishes, doing the air quotes.

Dean doesn’t know if he should laugh or cry first. Cas thought –

“Cas? Dean?” Sam’s voice echoes down the bunker halls from the direction of the main entrance. “Where are you guys? We have to go soon!”

Blinking hard to try and reset his thoughts to a state which Sam was allowed in, Dean carefully says, “Go… where?”

Cas shifts around, embarrassed. “Ah – I was meant to wake you up to tell you that Mary called this morning and invited us over for dinner. It’s four already.”

 _Now_ Dean laughs – somewhat hysterically.

“I’m still wearing the shirt I was killing zombies in yesterday. Okay, look, hold that thought on our conversation, buddy. I have to shower.”

Shit, why did he call Cas ‘buddy’? He seriously has to stop before the angel gets any more confused, he thinks. Making a mental note that one upside of this embarrassing shit show of a failed love confession is that he should start calling Cas ‘babe’ immediately, Dean hastily roots around in his laundry for a shirt that probably isn’t ichor-stained.

Cas leaves to go reassure Sam they’re going to make it to dinner, with one last anguished look at Dean, Cas’s surprise proposition weighing the air between them.

What a fuck up. ‘Best friends with benefits’? He deserves this suffering.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author mostly just projects what they want out of season 12

Dean drives to Mary’s with Cas safely exiled in the back seat, and if Dean doesn’t check his mirror often enough, well, at least they’re not going too far and the roads are quiet.

Mary’s place is a small house on the edge of town, nothing like the one from his memories and dreams. The yard is bare, protective symbols and charms lurking amongst the innocuous wind chimes on the porch, and Mary chose it mostly for the basement that could be turned into a hunter’s base of operations (and the three of them had been happy to oblige her and put in a couple of weeks of hard labour to convert the house). It’s still sparsely furnished with badly-matched furniture, some picked up from the side of the road, and the floor is bare, unpolished boards. But copies of their battered childhood photos are framed on the wall and when they walk in it smells like home-cooking in a way that takes Dean viscerally back to toddlerhood.

Mary greets them with hugs, and Dean can feel that her uncertainty is finally draining away – he checks Sam’s reaction and catches the relief on his face over the top of her head. Cas smiles much more naturally – having him as a mediator has helped a surprising amount in the early conflicts as mother and sons got reacquainted, and Dean feels like the family has been rebuilt with him at the core of it as much as anyone else in the room.

 _Fuck buddies_ he thinks, with Cas’s heavy quotation marks hammered indelibly into his brain. _Fuck_ , he thinks, begging himself not to harp on it, at least in the here and now.

“Can I help with dinner?” he asks.

Mary smiles indulgently, probably assuming Dean is just continuing to be really needy around her. “Why don’t you lay the table, and then you can all tell me about your last hunt.”

“Well it turned out to be zombies, so I don’t think we should discuss it with food,” Sam laughs as Dean makes his escape.

*

Over dinner – casserole – he lets Sam hold up their end of the conversation, only interrupting at serious character defamation. For the first time at one of these family meals he’s not overwhelmed watching Mary rolling her eyes and laughing in turn – he can’t stop his eyes drifting over to Cas, running over and over their earlier conversation, trying to work out how Cas really feels, like this hasn’t been the most baffling question to him for years already – if that offer was a gesture of ‘I’m not bothered by you being into me – maybe it could be fun’ or Cas clamping down on his feelings and wondering if it would be all that bad to take what he can get from this relationship, and the dam being broken on Dean bottling up his attraction had given Cas the courage to suggest a next step that _benefited_ them both.

Cas meets his eye across the table and Dean feels himself blushing like war flashbacks to his first adolescent crush.

Unbidden, a neon sign lights up in his brain with an obnoxious buzzing: Cas has thought about fucking him.

He scrapes back his chair and volunteers to do the dishes while Sam still has a few morsels left on his plate. He hastily finishes just before Dean snatches it from under his nose, and Dean disappears into the kitchen. He kills half an hour tidying up, making Mary a shopping list because she’s out of damn near everything, and is wiping down the cabinet doors for lack of anything else to clean where Mary comes to find him.

She leans on the doorframe with a hand in her jeans pocket. She looks so young.

“Are you hiding?”

Dean listens carefully and catches Sam’s laughter from all the way across the house and out on the porch. It’s probably safe to assume Cas is the source.

“Not from you.”

“Do you, uh…. Want to talk about it?”

Frankly, she looks as terrified at the prospect as Dean feels. Dean has no idea how much more horrified her face would get if he started to explain the messy details of how he’s fucked up being in love with his best friend. He hasn’t even had a moment yet with her spotting a couple on the street or on the TV so he can see her reaction. Technically he had babbled out that gay marriage was legal in his lengthy and rapidly-delivered explanation of the muddled pros and cons of the modern age when she was newly returned from the dead, but he’d been more concerned with watching his mother devour greasy diner food like she hadn’t eaten in thirty years (well) and assuming as long as he didn’t accidentally pop a boner over Cas while he was in the same room as Mary it wouldn’t ever be a problem, because that relationship was locked up behind a great gate of repression and confusion. Except that it turned out the bars in the gate were so widely spaced something could slip right through anyway.

He gives up and smiles reassuringly, throwing the dish cloth back in the sink. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

She nods sadly, and Dean wonders if he should have tried anyway, or made up some crap about a thing with Sam to give her a reason to mother them.

“Well," she says, while he mentally wars with himself, “I was about to share a hunt I found, if you want to come through to the porch. It’s a nice evening.”

“More things to kill will definitely help,” Dean says, ignoring that as he pushes himself to move towards the door all the muscles that haven’t recovered from the last fight or not-sleeping in the car all night register their complaints.

Mary’s look of relief mirrors his own.

It’s been weird, having her as their new Bobby, but he’s starting to get used to the idea. She’s much less surly, for one.

It started with her looking up old contacts out of curiosity: even more distant family members, old friends so obscure that even the various attempts by demons to destroy the family and everyone connected to it had missed them. If there’s anything Dean is learning, it’s that there’s a seemingly endless supply of very distant Campbells. Clearly, an ancestor of theirs got very busy. But thirty to forty years down the line, those Mary once knew who are still alive are retiring and selling up shop, as it were. She had inherited a vast hunter network, crates of books, and more keys to storage lockers of cursed objects and the like than she knew what to do with… and with their issues with the Men of Letters sorted, they’d never been so well connected and networked. And, as a result, busy.

But with the small cases that the fate of the world never rested on, just a town full of people who weren’t going to get their blood sucked or their hearts ripped out of their chest… It is peace, in a way.

It is a warm evening as they sit on the porch, and Mary brings out a jug of ice tea from the fridge that, like the casserole, Dean feels he’s probably given himself a false childhood memory of. He’s still not entirely sure she smells like the Mary in his memory, with modern soap and washing powder altering that primal sense memory forever. At this point she could sit there texting and Dean would have a hazy summer memory of crawling into her lap to watch her do it when he was three.

Right now she’s carrying a stack of files in stolen Men of Letters stationery under her arm (no one has the heart to tell her to stop stealing it). Her attempts at a mom voice disappear in favour of the business voice, which is far more confident.

“Over the past few months, there’s been a strange pattern of deaths in Minnesota and Indiana – identical accidents occurring at exactly the same time, hundreds of miles apart, and suspicious accidents involving strangulation or hanging that leave the same exact pattern of bruises. I think we should split up for this one.”

Dean looks up from grimacing at a crime scene photo Mary has illegally got her hands on (he still feels weird on principle that they taught their mother to hack). “We?”

To avoid conflict, he’s sat on the porch steps, possessively stretching his legs over as much of them as possible to stop anyone else joining him. Mary is on the porch swing with Sam… Cas, as he’s wont to do, is lurking by the door not feeling the need to sit so urgently he’d bother dragging over one of the lawn chairs. He probably would have done it if Dean had, but then they’d have been sitting right next to each other. He’d have joined him on the steps too if Dean had given him an inch. He makes the mistake of catching Cas’s eye, and quickly focuses diligently on Mary. She doesn’t command attention, although she also rarely has to politely request it either.

“There are four of us,” Mary says, matter of fact. “It makes sense to use our resources and for two of us to go each way.” He’d caught her expression earlier as they described the zombie hunt, though. She’d been very good in a crisis, back when Lady Toni had Sam and Mary’s help had not been up for debate. She also proved again to be a damn good hunter. He’d thought she wanted a soft retirement after that, when she insisted on getting the house and putting down roots and keeping her resources separate from theirs (aside from the odd book that will never be returned), but she’s younger even than Sam and he’s not stopping any time soon.

He’s also sparkling enthusiastically at their mother.

Dammit.

Dean looks back at Cas, well aware that the angel had been attempting to drill a hole in the side of his head he was staring so hard, ever since Mary mentioned splitting up. “I bet we could solve it before them, huh, buddy?”

_Dammit._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which nothing much happens for a while before they actually have to go do their jobs

They agree to leave in the morning, because even Sam wants to put a proper night’s sleep between themselves and the last hunt. Dean lets him suggest it, pretending he’s not falling asleep on his feet; Sam probably says it for his benefit anyway.

What starts as briefly checking the weather channel for the forecast in both states becomes channel flipping, and, at a shamefully early hour, passing out on his mom’s dusty old sofa, his last coherent thoughts trying to work up the energy to argue with Cas over not watching more Storage Wars as he’s become annoying fascinated with it lately, and Dean is starting to worry.

Dean wakes up in the blue-grey dark before dawn, feeling comfortable and safe and extremely reluctant to regain consciousness. He realises why when, taking stock of his surroundings, he understands that somewhere between now and giving up and letting his head flop onto Cas’s shoulder in his last moments of bleary consciousness, he’s slid all the way down to rest his head in his lap.

Cas’s hand is loosely touching his shoulder, and if the angel doesn’t sleep, he must be in some sort of standby screensaver mode to wait out the night while Dean weighs him down like a possessive housecat.

Having mastered the urge to jolt awake and sit up – to stupidly protest this scenario when it’s something he may as well have wished for for years – Dean lays there enjoying the warmth of Cas’s knees beneath his cheek, the weight of his hand, the feeling of Cas’s thumb moving so gently against his shoulder Dean isn’t sure if it’s even stroking or just a result of the rise and fall of his back from breathing… Things have changed between them, but for once it’s in a way he doesn’t resent or regret.

Except for the way Cas has written it off as no more romantic than he’d taken any previous shoulder touch between them. Which, unfairly, have always made Dean’s heart flutter with the unspoken potential between them no matter how casually he tried to pass it off.

He should really tell Cas he can’t do this if Cas doesn’t feel the same, if he’s only offering this affection because he thinks it will make Dean happy…

A more urgent thought comes to him than ruining this comfortable moment with another crack at a hard talk about feelings that could well hurt them both. Shifting around as if dislodging a crick in his neck, Dean rolls over to lay facing up. He probably isn’t fooling the angel that he just woke up, but sue him for enjoying it before Cas pulls back his hand and Dean sees in the low early light, Cas opening his eyes to peer down at him with a startled look, drawing his hand away, clearly frightened he’d overstepped.

Dean purposefully doesn’t sit up, just smiles nervously. “Uh – did Mom say anything about these sleeping arrangements?”

Cas takes a second, his hand flexing, before relaxing and placing it back onto Dean’s shoulder in their new position. “I told her I’d watch over you. She seemed quite touched.”

Dean doesn’t know what to do with that. Mary has been so strange about Cas being an angel to begin with – Dean supposes they all took a while to warm up to him but he can’t imagine anyone having a problem with the latest iteration of Cas and her wariness about Cas had surprised him. But she’s far more relaxed nowadays, and Dean suspects a lot of that is her ganging up with him in arguments about her sons’ safety, or turning to Cas to fill in her many gaps both about Sam or Dean, and the modern world… After all, Cas had learned to passably fit in with humanity not that long ago himself, and knew how strange it could all look when you weren’t used to it. Dean still hasn’t recovered from learning his angel taught his mom to text.

Or that his mom texts as badly and emoji-crazily as his angel.

Still.

“But I wasn’t, you know…” Dean gestures vaguely at how they’re curled up on the sofa together. He doesn’t think he’d survive knowing Cas had casually told Mary it wasn’t weird that they were snuggling because he and Dean were potentially going to be fuck buddies and they were working on lowering their boundaries with each other… though he tries to give him more credit than that with social awkwardness these days, Dean can’t help thinking he would go outside and dig his own grave if Cas had said that, and he is distractedly trying to remember where Mary kept shovels while Cas works out what Dean is asking.

“You were sleeping with your head back on the sofa. She gave me some blankets and a pillow… After she went upstairs you ordered me to come watch Cutthroat Kitchen with you and when I sat down, immediately fell asleep like this.”

Dean does not remember that at all, but it seems likely and he breathes out hard.

“Then Sam said he ought to head back so I gave him the car keys. I hope you don’t mind.”

Right. Sam. Dean’s life briefly flashes before his eyes. “My keys that were in my jeans pocket.”

“You do mind.”

Dean makes himself think before he answered, which he should get a goddam prize for, but he’s so desperate not to fuck this up any further, including pointless arguments about Cas groping him in front of his brother.

“I’m sure he’s seen worse,” he eventually replies, and he can feel Cas relax, the hand on his shoulder unfreezing to go back to an ever more obvious stroking motion.

Dean wishes this could last forever, this apparently truce they’ve struck between “I know you want to be close to me” and “I want to be close to you” stopping short of the confused “but I don’t know how”.

He doesn’t want to admit it but the further reaches of his brain sometimes know what they’re doing when he doesn’t – that crazy improvising spark that’s got him out of untold number of life or death situations – kicks into action, perhaps to make up for blurting its attraction to Cas in the first place.

“Cas… we’re gonna go off on a hunt all by ourselves… What we were talking about before… That could be too distracting for us to work out while we’re on the job.” He feels Cas’s hand go still again on his shoulder. “I just mean… God knows how many times I’ve fucked up a hunt by hooking up in the middle of it.” He cringes just to actually say out loud anything implying he and Cas would – it just… feels like something that shouldn’t be put in words that casually when nothing has even happened. “You know, we’ll have time to work stuff out later. After.” Thankfully the caress on his shoulder resumes as Cas cottons on that he’s not being rejected – if nothing else Dean would have kept talking and said whatever he has to, to make him start again. He wonders if this is Cas’s way of letting on he’s just as freaked out about this as Dean is.

“I’m sure we could make it another week,” Cas says, deadpan sarcasm at full. “We’ve managed nearly 10 years already.”

“ _Barely_ managed,” Dean mutters, then tries to look innocent when Cas’s brow furrows at that, perhaps meaning to ask _when_ it went down to the line. Dean does not feel like running through the nearly endless list of just the moments that stand out clearly in his memory because he’s pretty sure he’s spent most of his life nobly resisting the urge to kiss Cas for whatever greater good reason was helpfully between them at that point. “I’m sure we’ll be fine keeping things as they are now, anyway.” He flashes a hopeful grin up at Cas.

Cas frowns for a while longer, perhaps wondering if that is a challenge. His fingers are still tracing small circles on Dean’s shoulder, but he moves his other hand to brush through Dean’s hair, nails skating over his scalp, just this side of tugging as his fingers move through it. Dean can’t help a full body shiver at that, and rolls over to hide his face from view. Again, he thinks Cas will stop and move his hand away, but after a moment of stillness, his hand sweeps the other way through Dean’s hair, gently and slowly, and Dean feels helpless to do anything other than fall back asleep, now feeling like the most pampered cat ever.

*

He wakes up in a full daylight version of morning, Cas replaced with a pillow, and he’s covered with one of the scratchy blankets from the Bunker that they’d leant Mary when she first started making her home.

He feels strangely alone despite hearing Cas’s voice from the kitchen, blurring into Mary’s as they debate some boring practicalities (he hears his mother’s voice rising shrilly about diner food, so it can’t be important and he trusts Cas to agree on his behalf in favour of greasy food). Still, he missed out on starting the day opening his eyes to see Cas right there.

He suddenly hates that it’s not _just_ a secret relationship – if it was, he might be brave enough in this hypothetical scenario where no one is holding him to his word over this thought, to go into the kitchen and kiss Cas on the cheek right in front of Mom, wish her good morning, and get this over and done with. But doing that might scare Cas off for good if he has rejected the romantic part of any potential relationship for his own reasons, and not just because Dean’s systematically fucked up showing his affection and pushed Cas away out of fear for nearly a decade.

 Dean eventually gets up and shuffles into the kitchen and hugs Mary, saving a smile for Cas over her shoulder. “Is there breakfast?” he asks hopefully.

“No,” Mary says at once, stepping away from the hug, and she and Cas scowl at each other. “I cooked everything I had left so I wouldn’t have to throw anything away before leaving on a hunt. Unless you want canned goods.”

Dean gives her an intentionally overdramatic horrified look at that. Mary’s cooking is not always how he thinks he remembers it (that is, sometimes awful), but canned food before hitting the road in a car full of knives is so John it kills his appetite entirely.

“We can get something on the road. Are you ready to go? Sam stole the car yesterday, so we’re gonna need a lift back to the Bunker.”

Mary looks at him and then back to Cas a couple of times with an odd expression on her face, perhaps trying to work out the story behind these confusing arrangements, but finally she just says, “Sure, I’ll go start the truck.”

She leaves them in the kitchen; Dean waits long enough to hear the front door close before saying, “She thinks we’re sleeping together anyway, doesn’t she?”

Cas doesn’t register any surprise. “About a week into our search for Sam she took me aside and questioned my orientation with some painfully outdated terminology. She meant well…”

“No, I know, Sam and I have been dealing with the whole ‘talks like a racist grandmother sometimes’ thing. I can imagine. She listens when you say what doesn’t fly in 2017.” He swallows hard. “D-did she imply she thought _I_ was –” He’s not actually sure what Mary would have called him. He doesn’t really want to know.

Cas’s hesitance proves he still sucks at lying when he feels bad about it.

“Never mind,” Dean says. He doesn’t have a clue how to defend his non-relationship with Cas from Mary’s conservative upbringing. Sometimes since she’s been back he thinks about the way Samuel Campbell took against him with a few snide comments that made Dean ache in his soul – and Mary may not take much after him, may have rebelled against that home – but he still raised her and that makes Dean all the more terrified to think how she would react. He never really considered it as a possibility before – never thought it would be an issue. Maybe it won’t, even in this bizarro Earth where he and Cas are talking openly about fucking.

Cas nods and puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder to gently lead him out to join Mary. She’s already sitting at the wheel of her awful old pickup truck she’d insisted on keeping so she wasn’t dependent on the Impala. Dean worries she hates the car too, though that at least would be personal between her and John.

She drives them back to the Bunker, seeming cheerful and unperturbed by Dean’s more pensive than usual manner. She can’t get enough of all the music she’s missed, even the terrible stuff, so the truck radio fills the space where they might have talked.

Sam, oblivious to his impending torment via local radio stations on a ten hour drive, meets them standing outside the Bunker, excited to get going. He hands Dean the Impala keys back so casually and with so little ceremony that Dean’s fears drift away completely if Sam doesn’t even have a reaction. He heads down to grab his duffel feeling lighter, like he and Cas have got away with some serious subterfuge.

Maybe that’s why when they’ve run in a convoy to the last diner before they split and drive their different ways, Dean pulls Cas to sit the same side of the booth as him on instinct, and sits with his hand on Cas’s thigh as often as he can risk leaving it there.

Dean feels happier than he has in a long time, not minding that the waitress probably clocks his and Cas’s ‘couple’ status. It puts him at ease to listen to Sam, easily the most talkative morning person among them, and enjoy his enthusiasm and obvious excitement to get his personal adventure with Mary. It sounds like he was up half the night reading about horrible things and serial killers that might have been shared between the two towns, and coming up with nothing that sounds relevant, but apparently enough trivia to keep him talking for the whole meal.

When he stops to take a bite, Dean grins at Mary across the table. “I am so sorry you’re stuck with him if it turns out to be a serial killer ghost.”

“No you’re not,” she says.

“No,” he agrees.

He basks in the laughter they all share, and squeezes Cas’s knee under the table.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean hangs back to wave as Mary’s noisy blue pickup truck pulls out of the parking lot of the diner. When they’re safely down the road and out of sight he turns to Cas, nervous suddenly, because he knows what he wants and now he has to actually put the words together and ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a few days off from life so have the whole first day of this case now I can type again.  
> Should I be tagging for massive sexual frustration if nothing else is happening? :P

Dean hangs back to wave as Mary’s noisy blue pickup truck pulls out of the parking lot of the diner. When they’re safely down the road and out of sight he turns to Cas, nervous suddenly, because he knows what he wants and now he has to actually put the words together and ask.

“Hey, Cas?” He holds out the car keys, shaking them gently at the angel.

Cas snaps from grinning fondly at the horizon to looking at Dean so fiercely he feels a stab of fear that he pissed Cas off by being too touchy feely and demanding. They still haven’t talked – he’s just been winging it.

Cas walks up to him with a smitey intensity that has Dean back right up against the car, and Cas is still moving right into his space – unhooking the keys from Dean’s fingers, reaching around to plant a hand on the car, pinning him into place.

“Dean,” he says, their faces an inch apart and the gap seeming to shrink ever further in Dean’s mind’s eye as he drags his gaze from Cas’s mouth to his eyes and back. “I can’t drive if you lean on the door.”

It takes a moment to even translate Cas’s amused rumble back into English as it all gets lost along the way of watching his mouth move, but once Dean’s brain catches up, he springs away from Cas into clear air that he can breathe without inhaling the thick tension between them. Red-faced and heart pounding, he trips over to the passenger side, and slams the door harder than he should.

It is a mistake to watch Cas looking directly at him and grinning victoriously as he starts the engine. Maybe it’s practice, or maybe it’s because Dean voluntarily gave up the driver’s seat, or just _knowing_ what it does to Dean, but Cas has at least the confidence he does driving his own car. There’s a world of difference between seeing Cas behind the wheel of that ridiculous car, and watching him pull out onto the highway with an elbow resting in the open window, his mussed up hair ruffling in the wind.

Dean swallows hard, and Cas turns to give him a surprisingly gentle sideways smile. That brief moment would keep him going for months, but then Cas puts his foot to the floor with all the confidence of being completely immortal, leaving Dean digging his nails into the seat and not  sure what would kill him first – Cas’s driving, or _Cas driving_.

He’d almost be jealous of Sam crawling along enjoying Mary’s playlist, but really, seeing Cas’s unadulterated happiness at joyriding in the Impala is almost good and pure enough to make him forget about his downstairs brain’s reaction to it.

Almost. It’s a long journey to Indiana, even with Cas behind the wheel.

*

They find their usual sort of cheap edge-of-town motel, and Dean watches Cas go to get a room, while he hangs back to collect their bags.

In practice, that means stopping to gulp in some huge steadying breaths while leaning against the car. He waits until Cas is out of sight in the little office building, then puts a hand on the roof of the car as a meaningful gesture. “Baby, I am so sorry if we don’t make it through the week without defiling your back seat. But, you’ve _seen_ him, right?”

The car doesn’t answer, which is a relief because Dean’s become hysterically jealous of her over the drive.

He takes way too long leaning over the trunk messing around with their bags, imagining Cas returning and finding some pretence to come right up behind him for one flimsy reason or another, but he spots the angel out the corner of his eye impassively waiting for him across the parking lot, so he admits defeat and makes himself haul the last bag out and dutifully head off to meet him.

They hadn’t discussed it, but when Cas produces a set of keys and Dean follows him into a room, it’s one with a single king-sized bed. So even the person in the motel office is assuming they’re screwing, probably.

The bed is big but it looks flimsy and Dean can’t help but wonder how the spindly headboard would hold up to someone angelically strong getting some use out of the mattress.

One heartfelt conversation stands between Dean and finding out –

“Dean? What should we do next?” Cas asks, apparently innocently, perhaps to draw Dean in from standing gaping at the bed from the doorway. There’s caution in his words, like he thinks he’s freaked Dean out instead of –

“Cold shower,” he squeaks. “F-For me. J-just me, I mean.” He dumps the bags on the end of the bed and locks himself in the bathroom before he has to deal with Cas and this awful state of knowing he could jump his bones whenever he wanted, and he’s banning himself from taking advantage.

 _It’s for your own good_ , he tells himself, when he’s got the shower running hot and he’s soaping himself up. He’s got _some_ self-preservation instincts, and if not for himself then hurting Cas over a misunderstanding about feelings is something he’d never forgive himself for.

God, but he hasn’t been this frustrated since that time he ended up blowing off steam by washing every car in the Bunker’s garage twice, willing Cas to just magically know to show up and join him in a porny fantasy.

At least that gives him something to think about in the shower.

He probably still has the short shorts back at the Bunker, if things work out with Cas…

*

It’s only mid-afternoon and Dean knows the perfect mood-killer – a trip to the morgue to visit the latest victim of the mystery deaths.

Sam and Mary still have some driving left to do, thanks to her total lack of racing instinct. They’ll have to make their own trip, Sam and Dean agree over text message (Sam not mentioning a thing about the old truck aside from a comment about the last mile marker they passed – Dean knows roads like other people know the layout of their house, and he can do the math) but Dean’s hoping that he can tell Sam and Mary exactly what to expect even if they don’t have an angel with them who has an uncomfortable habit of sniffing dead bodies.

The latest victim is from the night before last, an older man, his once sun-darkened skin a ghastly yellow after a few days on the slab. Mary hadn’t been able to get photos of the latest victims yet, but from a glance Dean can see the bruises on his neck match uncannily to the ones in the older photos in her files.

“Tragic, to slip and choke on your own shower curtain like that,” the coroner muses, Dean distracting her with conversation while Cas goes over to poke the corpse, forgetting human things like the need to wear gloves if you’re _really_ determined to touch.

Dean rolls his eyes at the coroner. “How often does that happen?” he asks, somewhat hypothetically.

“W-well, all the time,” the woman says, defensive and narrowing her eyes. “There was a girl last month who walked into some fishing line at her cabin. And a woman dang near decapitated herself with her laundry line the month before.” She shakes her head at Dean as if he is the one being obtuse, and shuffles off into her office with a stack of paperwork, leaving them to it.

Cas looks up and meets his “Can you believe that person?” look with sympathy.

“Humans seem to be able to get used to the most remarkable situations with enough time. Your adaptability is fascinating,” Cas says with his finger up the nose of the dead man.

“You wanna go to the burger joint we saw on the way here while we wait for cover of darkness to break into his house?” Dean suggests.

*

The victim had lived beside a small park near the centre of town, his yard spilling over with unkempt trees that upset the pristine look of the park, all in blossom and perfect.

Cas stops to stare around the neat rows of trees in the park, as Dean wiggles the boards around a gap in the fence. He suspects Cas isn’t just standing guard when he takes a moment to respond after Dean gets the plank he was messing with to move.

“C’mon, Cas,” he hisses, although it’s past dusk and no one is around.

“It’s a nice place here,” Cas says. “I can see why he came here.”

“What? Who?”

“The man whose house we're breaking into. The smell of these trees was all over him.”

“He has plenty of his own trees, Cas,” Dean says, rather resentfully of them, thrashing through the undergrowth to beat a path to the house. Cas finally follows once Dean is out of sight, like he can’t let him disappear.

Once they’re inside, Dean thinks the house could have been trashed by the ghost, or that was just how the late victim preferred to live. Dean whips out the EMF reader despite Cas’s innate power to sense it, and waves the bleeping machine speculatively around, until Cas glares its screeching into silence.

“So, ghosts,” Dean says.

Cas rolls his eye at him and nudges a stack of newspapers, causing dangerous sliding noises in a connected pile.

“Better than a cursed object,” he points out.

Dean shivers to think of exploring the hoarder’s house for one. Could still be a random haunted collection of old pizza boxes. A haunted pizza delivery chain.

“The victims died all around town, though,” he quickly points out. “If it is a ghost, it’s getting around somehow.”

“And it’s in two towns at once.”

They stare at each other and at the piles of junk around them.

“You know what, let’s go research violent deaths in town some more and see if there’s anything Sam missed. Maybe he and Mom have a better lead on their side.”

*

They don’t, but Sam does have a great “you had to be there” story about their much-delayed drive, and Dean can hear Mary laughing in the background as he tries to tell it, so he just updates Sam on what he and Cas have found, and reminds him that this is absolutely a race and that Dean’s team is winning.

When he hangs up it sinks in that he’s now alone with Cas with no expectations of being interrupted even by so much as a text message until tomorrow. But when he looks at Cas, he’s squinting at his laptop, perhaps having taken Dean’s joke about the race to heart. He starts off asking one question about online research, that leads to fifty, and Dean leaning over his shoulder teaching him how to use the internet for obscure local history research or obtaining records from behind a paywall without paying, all while huffing at Cas’s slow typing and getting unreasonably excited when he finally breaks the habit of accidentally closing every tab instead of navigating away from it. By the time Cas is set up to be an internet ghostbuster, it’s late and Dean is exhausted, and fighting the urge to stay sprawled over Cas’s shoulder even though the excuse has expired, and just sleepily nuzzle into his neck, so he figures it would be a lot safer to admit defeat and go to bed.

“I’ve got this,” Cas says reassuringly, when Dean yawns in his ear instead of saying anything. “You should sleep.”

“You’ll keep an ear out for any police radio that sounds like our kind of thing?”

“Of course.”

Dean smiles wonkily at him, feeling way too full of love and pride about Cas being so happy and comfortable on the job, a ridiculous daydream of his for so long. He crosses to the bed, shedding outer layers, boots and jeans, before he glances over to see Cas staring at him. Dean points accusingly: “Research. This strip tease is over.”

He has never seen Cas blush before in his life, and it’s tempting to grab his phone out of his discarded jeans and snap a picture. He crawls under the cover instead, smiling to himself.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean’s having a completely implausible dream. Some sketchy motel, a room to themselves, and Cas laying on top of him, kissing and teasing him until Dean’s groaning and digging his fingers into Cas’s broad shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting more after the brisk update schedule I started with - I've grossly overestimated my ability to turn a full notebook of teeny tiny illegible handwriting into typed words. :P Have some blatant misuse of Mary's return for Destiel enabling, as an apology.

Dean’s having a completely implausible dream. Some sketchy motel, a room to themselves, and Cas laying on top of him, kissing and teasing him until Dean’s groaning and digging his fingers into Cas’s broad shoulders. The angel is only down a trenchcoat and suit jacket, but Dean is naked – not that he can feel exposed when he’s held so closely in Cas’s arms.

He moans Cas’s name, and Cas lets go of his earlobe from between his teeth and raises himself up on his elbows to look down at Dean, his eyes wide and adoring; Dean can feel him devouring the sight of Dean laying there so emotionally open and desperate for him.

“Dean,” Cas murmurs, and his voice is everything Dean had once feared but now yearns to hear Cas say it. The _knows_ Cas is about to tell him, because it’s his dream.

So of course Dean jolts awake at some loud noise from the nearby road which has the terrible timing that dreams always seem to have as they build up to an unfulfilled desire knowing exactly when something will shake the dreamer awake.

“Fuck,” he groans to himself, defensively curling around himself as he takes in the morning sunlight streaming in through the curtains, and Cas still at the table by the window, still wearing the full trenchcoat get up because catch him so much as showing a flash of forearm. He’s talking on the phone and looking very concerned about Dean, squinting across the room at him.

“Let us know if you find anything,” Cas says into the phone in a totally level voice, while Dean lays there pinned by his gaze, his heart hammering. “Goodbye.” He hangs up without looking away from staring out Dean. Dean folds.

“Mornin’” he croaks.

“That was Mary. I was just explaining that after searching all night I can’t find anything in this town’s records that could correspond to the ghost kills. The town is only seventy years old and there have never been any _real_ hangings here. I think the ghost has only been attacking people in town for a few years. I think we can only try to learn why it’s happening to this town as well.”

Dean stares at him a while longer, almost none of those words having fixed in his brain over the distraction of a long monologue in Cas’s deep voice. Cas looks amused and like he knows it – Dean would never claim to be psychic but he definitely dreads what Cas will say next right down to the sardonic tone of voice.

“I trust you slept well.”

“You should know,” Dean shoots back.

“You let me drive all the way here just so you could watch me. You’re not still complaining about me watching you sleep.”

“I fuckin’ knew it.”

Even though Dean’s tone is what he hopes is still playful, Cas scowls and his response is sour: “You made it clear it bothered you and I respected that, though you’ve said the same about ‘personal space’” (the air quotes were back – Dean knew he was in trouble) “And many other things that you feared would betray your attraction to me. I thought – “ Cas stops abruptly, and Dean suddenly wonders if he’s as lost as Dean feels about whatever new understanding is between them.

“Uh – you – you’re… Look, if you really like watching me sleep that much, I’m not gonna tell you to stop. Just stay outta my dreams.”

To his relief Cas smiles again. Well. Smirks. “It sounds like I am there in spirit already.”

Dean flushes and pulls on the sheets that are already yanked up to his chin since waking. “I – uh.”

Cas takes pity on him. “Mary was telling me that Sam did find a link between the towns in his own search, though they can’t see how it connects to the job. This town was founded by an entrepreneur from theirs. I looked him up and his house is open to the public as a local history museum…”

“Yeah, okay. It’s worth a try. Uh. You could maybe head out and get us breakfast and coffee?”

Cas gives him another of those inscrutable smirks and collects the car keys.

Dean goes to have a cold shower.

*

When Cas returns with the coffee he hands Dean his cardboard cup with a deliberate long touch of their hands on the cup which nearly costs Dean the coffee and the motel’s carpet a new stain.

He watches Cas writing down the address of the house for them with his heart beating hard in the back of his throat, and when they leave the room, begs the car keys back and doesn’t look at Cas for most of the drive.

*

The house is one of the more obnoxiously expensive that Dean’s found himself wandering around pretending to be a tourist in, but no less boring. From the guide’s well-practices droning on about the place, the wealthy industrialist’s back story has no reason for all the suits of armour and definitely no explanation why his restless spirit might be murdering people.

Dean keeps a careful few inches between Cas and himself as they wander around. He moves away without leaning into the touch like he wants when he feels a hand rest on his elbow or the small of his back. Cas hangs back a step when Dean slips away from an innocent shoulder touch, and gives Dean a wounded look.

He should probably try to make it right and let Cas touch him, or offer him some gesture in return. He knows he’s being unfair because he had his hands all over Cas the other day. He doesn’t _want_ to hurt Cas. He wants to be so touchy feely someone on the tour mistakes them for husbands and calls them sweet in an attempt to be progressive and non-judgemental, and he wants to bask in that and feel like they’re right, that he and Cas belong together.

But every single part of that is where Dean’s overstepped the understanding between Cas and himself, so he shakes his head and hurries after the tour group, and Cas trails behind him to yet another room of ugly furniture and not a peep from the EMF meter in Dean’s pocket.

Perhaps it’s because he still feels strange after the dream, and Cas’s response. He’s not used to a world where Cas flirts back. It’s been unsettled since Cas so carefully and matter of factly told him they could be fuck buddies if he wanted. And now he’s less sure than ever of what Cas wants, and scared that it’s all been at cross purposes like he feared, but that it’s not Cas who would get hurt. He’s pretty sure it’s gone too far to end this without tearing his own heart out.

When his phone rings, Dean takes the chance to duck out of the tour group with a murmured, “You got this, babe,” leaving Cas to keep an eye out for anything cursed and/or haunted, and answers as he fast-walks to the exit.

“Hi Dean!” Mary sounds almost gratingly cheerful after the funk he’s been in all day.

“Hey Mom,” he replies, because he never misses a chance to say it. “How’s the hunt going?”

“We’ve just been to the morgue.”

“Uhuh.”

“It’s the exact same pattern on our vic too.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a pause, and Dean can hear the sounds of the street Mary’s standing on from her end of the line – the parking lot he’s made it to is quiet and tree-lined and he can match the five cars in it to the rest of the tour group and staff they’d seen there. He heads to the Impala just for the company.

“Dean… Are you okay? Sam said you’d be very sarcastic about our progress. I hope you’re not trying to be nice just because it’s me.”

Dean sighs and rubs his temples hard. He remembers how anxious Mary was when she tried to help him with this before, but he’s going crazy and she _had_ offered.

“It’s just working with Cas wearing me down,” he finally manages to say after several rejected drafts.

“I thought you got on really well with Cas. Have you fallen out?”

“No… Uh.”

“Sam says he’s very useful to have on a hunt – he was complaining about your unfair advantage.”

“Yeah, he is. He’s great, honestly. It’s just… We haven’t really worked together like this. It always used to be something we knew was, you know… weird. Me ‘n’ Sam fighting so I called Cas instead. Cas coming to me for help, or _to_ help me when Sam was in trouble. It’s never been just… normal to work with him? Alone? I dunno… it’s… I don’t know how to do this. At all. As a friend, he’s amazing. To work with, we don’t know what we’re doing. I didn’t even know he’d wanted to stick around and hunt with me until recently. I don’t know if he wants to carry on doing this forever. He’s an _angel_ and our lifestyle _sucks_. He’s too good to mess around with one ghost at a time when he’s fought literal heavenly battles. And he won’t say anything, but I’m so worried this isn’t want he wants, that he’ll just get up and walk out and go back to Heaven. I’m surprised every time I look up and he’s still here.  Just… what if he’s only playing at being a hunter, because he thinks he’s supposed to, but he doesn’t _care_?”

There’s a long silence when he runs out of words, and he’s suddenly scared that he’s run off Mary too – either because she saw through that to where the raw panic was really coming from, or because she now thinks he’s that much of a mess.

He hears a long sigh from the other end of the line. “Dean… I’m so sorry. I know I have missed so much and maybe that’s where your – ” She swallows after running into nothing but a choked up sound. “Your fear of abandonment comes from. I see it on Cas’s face that he cares about you as much as we _all_ care for each other.”

“Mom…” He’s gonna cry too if she isn’t careful.

“I know it’s taking us all a while to get used to working together, and to learn how to be a family. I know you wanted to come with me but you let Sam instead so that he could work with me. Perhaps you should see this chance to work with Cas as the same, even if you’ve known him for so long – it’s your get to know each other hunt. And… thank you for sending Sam with me.”

“Yeah, uh…” Dean has been watching the door closely and he finally sees Cas emerge from it, apparently having ditched the tour group as well. “I got to go. He’s coming back.”

“Just talk to him. Hear from his own mouth that he wants to do this job with you, if you’re having a hard time taking it on faith he wants to be with you.”

“Okay! Bye, Mom.” Dean hangs up, and uses the sort of emotional management skills he’s learned to handle the shock of a monster jumping out on him to pocket his phone and not panic about her phrasing on everything from “faith” to “be with you” while looking Cas in the eye.

Honestly, he feels so guilty at the thought of agreeing with Mary and then not doing what she said, it’s almost his entire motivation to dare to speak to Cas again.

“They just came out of the _morgue_ ,” Dean says, laughing much too nervously. “You find anything at the house?”

“Information on where he’s buried. The house is clean, but as you say, it’s ‘worth a try’.”

“Great. Um. I guess we have the rest of the day before we go salt and burn anything. Lunch?”

Cas, who, on the whole trip so far, has eaten maybe three fries from second portions Dean only ostensibly bought for Cas in the first place before eating himself, nods like there’s nothing he wants more in the world.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas steals his fourth fry from Dean’s plate at the exact moment Dean works up the courage to talk – “What do you want?” he blurts, looking up sharply to see Cas with a fry halfway to his mouth, deer in headlights expression at getting caught.

Cas steals his fourth fry from Dean’s plate at the exact moment Dean works up the courage to talk – “What do you _want_?” he blurts, looking up sharply to see Cas with a fry halfway to his mouth, deer in headlights expression at getting caught.

Dean winces and pushes the plate at him. “I just mean… Uh… Not fries. What you’re actually… you know…” Cas’s confused head tilt is suggesting, no, he does not. “I-I’m not good at talking about this stuff,” Dean groans, rubbing his face tiredly. “What’s happening between us. Or not. Where do you even want that to go?”

Now Cas takes a fry just to have an excuse not to answer immediately, while Dean sits there frozen and sweating through his overshirt and fearing he’ll die on the spot and never finish the really good burger he’d put down to finally do this.

Cas swallows and looks at Dean with those eyes that Dean always finds knowledge of the cosmos in, ancient and strange until Cas looks at him with gentle affection, and then it sounds as ridiculous as it looks to hear something that alien finally say out loud, “I want to be close to you.”

Dean stares without comprehending as Cas takes full ownership of the fries by emptying the bottle of ketchup directly on top of them.

“Close,” he repeats.

Now Cas looks accusing, although Dean has no idea what he’s done to deserve it this time, except for how shitty he’s been to Cas all morning.

“Dean… I was not created to sit here and eat fries. Or to go on hunts of one lowly ghost at a time. Or to drive around in a car. Or to go to your mother’s for dinner. I wasn’t made with the intention of being allowed to live among humans at all. It was once punishable by death. There are probably angels in Heaven who’d still want to enforce that. And here I am.”

He pauses to eat another fry, possibly just to make a point or possibly to let that sink in; possibly because he really likes ketchup.

Dean has had this thought a few times, in a way, wondering why Cas stayed those few times when it had been by choice. He has to admit, mostly he’d thought it mired in abandonment and self-esteem crises, wondering why Cas would stay for him, thoughts that quickly drifted into looking at all his own terrible off-putting features, than looking at the more abstract “why would he stay at all?”

He must be making an obvious face asking this. “Dean… You’re like a beacon. A light that I’ve been finding my way towards since I met you. It’s because of you – for you – that I’ve found my way to this exact spot and this conversation. It took me a few years to realise the pull that I felt towards you – to know the power of our bond, what you _meant_ to me. But even when it was an unvoiced thought, even to myself, I recognised the changes in my existence came from you at every turn – and to know that I desired more.

“Now you’re my best friend and you call me family, but I still feel a yearning to be closer and you still look at me like you want more as well, whatever you say. I’m still not sure _how_ we’re supposed to be closer, in a way that makes you happy, but it’s all I want. It’s why I suggested –” Cas freezes and glances around at the nearby tables. He’s definitely learned self-consciousness from Dean, or at least self-preservation that Dean will flip the table if Cas shouts out ‘fuck buddies’ in the middle of the diner.

“So you _don’t_ want to fuck me.” Dean keeps his voice low; he can’t keep the disappointment out of his conclusion, which helps the dull tone.

“I don’t know,” Cas eventually says, after some contemplation on the answer, his face falling. “But exploring our physical relationship is not unappealing, if you want –”

“No.”

He’s not sure if Cas looks more stunned than he feels about what just came out of his own mouth. “No,” he repeats, a little more confidently. Not when Cas looked like that just to say he wasn’t sure.

Dean pushes back his chair and gets ups, with one last longing look at his half-eaten burger. “Come on, let’s go back to the motel.”

Cas looks close to horrified, and Dean knows he’s been a dick to him all day, but he just doesn’t have the words for this anymore, not after so many attempts to talk about stuff. The thought of expressing any more is going to give him an anxiety attack. He drives back in silence, tapping on the wheel when they have to stop at lights. Cas doesn’t say anything but it seems much less like giving him space, and rather more like he’s still upset.

Back at their room Dean goes straight to the bed to start unlacing his boots, and Cas drifts towards the chair in the corner. Another form of miserable exile, Dean thinks. “No, uh, Cas…”

Cas stops, and stands like he really would just wait until Dean asked him to move. How much of that was Cas being Cas and how much was years of not knowing where else he stood with Dean?

Dean pats the bed beside him. “Come on, we have hours to kill before dark. Let’s just… watch TV. Get your shoes off and get on the bed.”

Cas sits right at the foot of the bed, while Dean’s making himself comfy on a carefully picked side to give Cas the option to join him up by the headboard. Dean watches him painstakingly struggle to kick his shoes off with just his toes, seemingly deliberately taking forever. When he’s done, he stays at the end of the bed and turns expectantly to the dark TV screen.

“I’m not going to be able to watch with you sitting there blocking the view,” Dean says, from his space with a totally unimpeded view of the screen. He pats the pillow beside him. “Come on.”

He waits until Cas is resting back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him, and then Dean uses up all the last remaining scraps of his courage and shifts over from his spot into Cas’s, into his lap.

The surprised noise Cas makes is worth everything as Dean settles in, letting himself relax down between Cas’s legs, and to avoid explaining anything, casually grabs the remote from the bedside stand and flicks the TV on like this is something they do every day. He feels his stomach unknot as Cas goes from implicitly allowing him to do it by not shoving him off onto the floor, to wrapping his arms around Dean from behind to hold him in a very cautious hug.

“Is this close enough?” Dean murmurs, letting his head fall on Cas’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Cas breathes into his ear.

Dean is glad Cas can’t see how much he’s soppily smiling at that. He’d lose all his street cred, but he swears nothing has ever felt so good as snuggling with Cas, watching fragments of old movies as they channel hop and argue over it, whiling away a slow afternoon.

It’s never felt so special to be close to someone, just to _be_ close to them. He almost gets why that would be all Cas asks for.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reverse crypt scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (this probably ought to have been part of the last chapter, but the heat has been killing me and I've been very lethargic about typing up, so two short ones instead!)

When night comes, Dean’s feeling surprisingly rested and excited to go do the boring salt and burn, just because it’s with Cas. He’s kept himself from drifting off and missing anything in the world’s most vanilla snuggle session, but that’s come at the price of leaving him amped up and feeling vaguely aroused all evening, and as a result frustrated again. He’s not really able to turn it off even for the purposefully non-erotic cuddling he’d initiated.

His panic over what Cas wants from this had ended, though – he’d spent a couple of hours laying snug against Cas, occasionally squirming around to stave off pins and needles, and he’d had Cas’s crotch against the small of his back the entire time without the slightest reaction, and he knew that if he couldn’t even make it through the evening without urgent breathing exercises every time he felt Cas’s arms shift their grip on him, he wouldn’t last a minute without his dick making it awkward if they’d been sitting the other way around. Which had been a large part of his motivation to gently cajole Cas into making them sit this way. Not like he’d _meant_ to test Cas.

He absolutely plans to see what Cas _is_ _willing_ to do with him since he _had_ offered, and Cas has flirted back at least once in his life (and since this week Dean’s suddenly suspicious about some of their historical interactions) and blushed on an entire other separate occasion, but not yet. Not until Cas actually seems ready. Dean can’t believe how relieved he is that he didn’t try to fuck Cas earlier, a sentiment he can barely have imagined feeling just last week. He may not really understand where Cas is coming from, but if this is how he feels…

Dean finally looks at the darkening sky beyond the confines of their room, and decides it’s time to move. “Hey, babe, wanna go desecrate a grave?”

Cas presses a brief kiss to the top of his head. “I’d love to.”

Dean’s back to feeling elated and terrified all at once as Cas reluctantly lets him up so they can head to the car.

*

“Ah, mausoleums. All the fun of breaking and entering, no digging.” Dean can’t believe their luck, as he holds out the bolt cutters to Cas. “Will you do the honours?” He’s pretty sure he’s floating, as he glances around the pitch dark cemetery. If the whole world feel brighter, all the better for scanning their surroundings for trouble.

Cas makes short work of the padlock and they sneak in, armed with salt and accelerant.

Dean should probably tell Cas that he loves him, he thinks as they look around the small crypt. He’s pretty sure Cas has managed to trick him into a relationship without actually asking anything, and he confessed to something that _sounds_ like love. Or, he doesn’t think he’ll have any problems treating it like love.

His torchlight catches the name on the big tomb in the middle of the crypt – “This must be him.” He stares at the tomb for a second. “I left the crowbar back in –”

Cas rolls his eyes and gives the huge stone slab what seems to be a gentle nudge, but it slides back with a low rumble to expose enough of the skeleton beneath for them to get to work.

“ _Damn_ ,” Dean says, grinning at Cas.

Yeah, as soon as they get all the annoying feelings stuff out of the way, Dean won’t feel like a horrible person for asking Cas to indulge a few fantasies that all these reminders of how strong he is inevitably cause.

He just has to tell him…

“Dean? Your lighter?”

He blinks, wondering how long he was staring gormlessly at Cas, who seems to have already salted the bones while Dean was on another planet.

“Cas, I…” his voice cracks to a stop.

“You forgot a lighter?”

“Uh –”

Cas rolls his eyes again though he’s smiling and doesn’t look truly pissed off. He puts a hand over the tomb. A moment later the skeleton bursts into flame all of its own accord.

“I’m keeping you,” Dean says weakly.

Cas smirks with pleasure, eerie and powerful in the light of the fire, and very self-satisfied.

Good enough.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, have we ever taught you to play pool? I get the feeling you’d be great at it,” Dean says, the unattended table catching his eye as he scopes the room by habit. Dean imagines it will involve a lot of bending over the table. Just imagining Cas holding a pool cue makes Dean restless and hot under his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So remember how I was posting this as if I had an invisible deadline? Well I missed it.  
> Nothing scheduled for the next couple of weeks and this story is actually finished, aside from not being typed up so hopefully I can post regularly again until the end now I'm feeling a bit better.   
> Anyway here's an extra-long chapter that's been half-typed for an entire month. <3

They head to a bar a safe distance across town from the cemetery, and Dean buys Cas a dozen shots just to see what happens.

Probably not a great deal, he guesses, with Cas as much an angel as he’s ever been, minus the wings, but Dean steals a couple of shots for himself before he starts his beer. Cas downs the rest in short succession and glares at Dean, grabbing the last shot as Dean playfully reaches for it without ever meaning to do more than wind Cas up.

They’re being a gross same side of the booth couple, and Dean has his arm across the back of the bench, possessively touching Cas just because he can. The other team aren’t texting back, and Dean is still feeling unsatisfied that they’ve solved the problem, however fun that trip to the mausoleum was. They’ve hopefully broken the links between towns, but he’s thinking perhaps he and Cas should head out to join Sam and Mary to get to the root of the problem. It’s very tempting to suggest they stay here another day to make sure that nothing else happens, because that’s a lot of time to themselves in the motel waiting for Mom and Sam to catch up and get a break in the case at their end.

“Hey, have we ever taught you to play pool? I get the feeling you’d be great at it,” Dean says, the unattended table catching his eye as he scopes the room by habit. There are a few potential marks to hustle hanging out at the bar, that on a normal day he’d already be luring them to play, but he’s not sure how teaching Cas would factor into a strategy to exploit them. Probably dependant on exactly how freakishly good Cas was on his first try, or in favour of keeping this evening between themselves, how distractingly hot teaching him to play is. Dean imagines it will involve a lot of bending over the table. Just imagining Cas holding a pool cue makes Dean restless and hot under his skin.

Cas turns eagerly to examine the pool table for himself, but then freezes, raising a hand to his temple after a moment. His expression sinks. “There’s something coming over the police radio frequency… It sounds like another kill from our ghost.”

“Are you sure?” Dean looks longingly at the pool table.

“They sound very confused about how the man died. We need to go look.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Dean reluctantly lets go of the back of Cas’s coat, hardly aware until that point that he’d been clinging to it, and he scoots out from the booth so that Cas can get up too.

*

Dean can’t argue with Cas having seen him down those shots at the bar, but there’s nothing fun about handing over the keys and letting Cas drive them to the site of the latest death. Cas looks grim and focused on finding his way there – another older house near the park in the centre of town, easy to guess where the ghost had been by the paramedics still outside.

They blag their way in, and find a grisly scene just beyond the door –

“That’s what you get still using phones with cords in 2017,” Dean says, grimacing. “I suppose they’re gonna say he was talking as he came down the stairs, and slipped?”

“We didn’t stop anything.”

Cas ignores his attempt to lighten the mood and pushes past to examine the freshly dead body.

While Dean’s loitering awkwardly trying not to catch the eye of any local law enforcement for too long, his phone rings: Sam finally getting back to him after his multiple texts since leaving the bar. Dean glances over at Cas still staring grimly at the awkwardly hanging body and figures he has it in hand, so he slips back out to talk by the car in case he says anything too unprofessional that would draw too many suspicious glances.

“ – Yeah, it happened again here too. We’re on our way.”

“It’s getting pathetic how we can still beat you when we’re racing to something that happened at the exact same time. Step up your game, Sammy.”

“It was only just called in… And anyway we had to leave the library first.”

“Figures, with Mom there you’re not going to be allowed to go to the bar.” Not that Cas hadn’t shared with him a hilarious story about getting Mary hammered while the two of them were still getting to know each other – Dean figures Sam’s too young for his delicate ears to hear the tale. “Did you find anything?”

“For some reason they don’t get a whole lot of news from a small town hundreds of miles away. We’ve been following just the weird deaths from here, as far back as we can, and they go further than your town existed.”

“Told you it was your problem.”

“Hey, thinking of problems, what’s your problem?”

“Wha–”

“Mom said you fell out with Cas. Can you really not spend a day alone with him!?”

To Mary’s credit, Dean can hear her complaining from the driver’s seat that Sam has brought it up.

Dean tries to defend at least his and Cas’s friendship, but Sam isn’t paying attention:

“We didn’t–”

“Yeah, I _know_ Mom… Dean, just try and be a bit more sensitive. Cas can get pretty miserable about stuff, and you’re…”

“I’m plenty sensitive!” Dean complains, feeling genuinely wronged after his handling the of the relationship drama earlier. Sam did not understand the amount of emotional energy required to snuggle Cas (and Dean hoped he’d never know, to be fair).

“You’re being obtuse about this right now!” Sam points out.

“You’re obtuse,” Dean complains, and hangs up on him.

He leans on the car, sulking. How is it fair that Sam starts trying to tell him how to act, like Dean has no idea what he’s doing, literally the same day he manages to actually untangle the mess between him and Cas?

Cas, who is stalking out of the house, scowling darkly. He hardly looks at Dean, just gets in the car and start the engine immediately. Dean has to scramble in with a sudden fear that Cas really would drive off without him.

*

The angel is silent all the way back to the motel, leaving Dean worrying what he’s done to piss him off.

When they get in, Cas heads for his laptop at once.

“We have to go over everything and see what we missed,” Cas says, when Dean looks questioningly at him, still hovering in the area of the door and waiting to see what will go catastrophically wrong before he goes any further into the room and accidentally steps in it.

Dean has no idea what else to do or say, but at least research usually means a drink – he leaves a beer on the desk next to Cas as well as opening another for himself, and drags his own laptop out to join Cas at the table.

He follows the more intuitive route through victim’s life stories and online presence, as well as setting up a search for any cases that he might be able to trust were also duplicate hauntings.

It takes ten minutes for his mind to start wandering. It’s really not long since they left the bar – he could have been flirting with Cas over a really neglected game of pool still…

… Wow, maybe he is as selfish as Sam thinks he is.

He closes his laptop, getting Cas’s attention – in the form of another grumpy look.

“Do you need to sleep _again_?”

“No – um. You’re… upset.”

“People are still dying.”

“I _know_.”

“We have done everything we could think of and someone died again, and we’ve got _nowhere_.”

Dean breathes out a bit too quickly. “You’re just upset about the job.”

Cas narrows his eyes dangerously, and Dean tries to look contrite for that comment, while still feeling weak with relief that he hasn’t somehow ruined his relationship with Cas before it even started.

“Cas – I know how it is. I feel these deaths too. Trust me, I know how heavy the world is.”

“You were joking about that man’s death.”

“You have to, not to go crazy. You said yourself, we’re doing as much as we can, and this is a _weird_ one. But you can’t beat yourself up over the people who die while you’re still trying your hardest.”

“You do, though.”

Sometimes, Dean wishes Cas would look away more often, like when he stares into Dean and describes him in three words with absolute certainty. Dean fiddles with the label on his beer bottle and says nothing.

“I have seen how the word weighs on you. I’ve been the _cause_ of that weigh at times…” Cas takes a final moment to look grumpy at Dean, as if it's his fault Cas has to be sympathetic now, before his face softens and he continues. “I’m sorry I implied you didn’t care.”

Healthy communication is turning out to make Dean feel sort of dizzy, having never built up a tolerance for it at an early age. Or maybe it’s just being fixed in place with that unrelentingly caring look. It’s more than he can handle.

“Well, I suck. Don’t use me as a role model. Sam seems really well-adjusted about this sort of shit. Try him.”

Cas finally smiles at that. “I’d prefer to keep this between us.”

“Uh –”

Cas doesn’t respond to Dean’s worried expression, just gets up and crosses to the bed. Dean’s pretty sure he hasn’t started sleeping since yesterday, but he gives Cas a chance to make it clear before he moves to join him. Cas repeating Dean’s gesture of patting the bed is more than enough.

He’s expecting to be carefully arranged in another hug; he was totally ready to fall asleep curled in Cas’s arms, but he hasn’t even had a chance to bend to unlace his boots when Cas’s palm is flat against his cheek, guiding his face towards Cas’s own, and Dean stops breathing.

The stolen kiss is quick, gentle, and Cas doesn’t even close his eyes, he’s clearly so much more concerned about watching Dean for a reaction. He pulls away while Dean is still staring in wide eyed shock trying to get with the programme that this is even happening despite the overwhelming evidence of the warmth of the lips pressed against his own.

It’s been nearly a week since he accidentally blurted his attraction to Cas and he still hasn’t made a place in his reasonable expectations for reality that kissing Cas might actually be a thing he’s allowed to do.

It’s not exactly a great first kiss, but a necessary one.

Cas is still pulling further away, moving up the bed distractedly like maybe they’ll watch more TV, his shoulders slumping and disappointed.

Dean can feel the look of shock his face twisted into; he’s so scared of the line they crossed that he feels more sick than excited, because after years of telling himself over and over not to kiss Cas, going ahead and letting it happen is triggering primal flight or fight responses and honestly there’s a part of him that would condone fleeing the scene to sleep in the car after this – but he’s more scared of hurting Cas and at that point Dean knows he has to suck it up.

He forces himself to kick back into action after the freeze frame and hastily tries to look a bit more excited, to let go that part of him that’s been convinced this is impossible and he can’t have it, since for once he’s happy to be wrong… He follows Cas, climbs onto him not to snuggle in his arms like earlier but to straddle his lap. Cas’s hands rest on Dean’s waist just to hold him in place, asking no more of him yet. After another shaky breath, Dean places his hands on Cas’s shoulders, leans in as far as he dares until Cas knows it’s safe to try again, this time his eyes dropping closed before their lips meet, and Dean forces himself to do the same.

The comfort of the dark sanctuary behind his eyes pushes Dean to seek that warmth of Cas’s lips, as his fear melts away and he settles in against Cas, lets his hands explore up into Cas’s hair, cup his face and run his thumb along Cas’s cheekbones, enjoying the sensation of stubble against his palms, feeling his heart skip every time Cas presses kisses to Dean’s mouth in return.

His attempt to deepen the kisses and tease Cas for tongue is finally met with Cas gently pushing him away, the grip on Dean’ shoulder so powerfully firm it completely undermines Cas’s apparent desire not to rile Dean up any more. He’s going to have to talk to Cas about the manhandling – once he works out how to bring it up without sounding like he actually wants Cas to _stop_.

Right now Cas is way too invested in stopping. Concern lines his face as his eyes search Dean’s. Perhaps Cas finally proves he can’t read Dean’s thoughts and it’s all been an elaborate mindfuck over the years to make Dean wonder if he can: “Are you comfortable with this?”

“Shit, Cas, I’ve wanted to kiss you almost as long as I’ve known you…”

Cas finally looks away, his intensity breaking like a storm clearing out of the sky. “I _know_.” He just sounds tired. “But now it’s different. It’s… more.”

Dean is seriously beginning to dread that the rest of his life will involve having to talk about deep feelings on a regular basis. He watches his thumb tracing back and forth across Cas’s cheek, catching the corner of his mouth as it stretches into a smile at the stroke. The angel’s nothing if not hopeful, however much he’s trying to scowl. Dean leaves another quick kiss to his lips and isn’t resisted.

Perhaps yanking the band aid off will get this over and done with. “Do you remember when you were human; when I came to visit you in Idaho?”

“How could I forget. I nearly got vaporised.”

Dean ducks his head to laugh: Cas may be scowling but his eyes are still fixed on Dean, tracing his movements or dropping to his lips. He’s not really pissed off, with all his potential for fiery angelic wrath: that much Dean knows. He’s seen a thousand times more of Cas’s face in resentment or anger than this strange gentle expression he has hiding beneath the surface.

“After that. When I took you back to my motel room and you crashed out and slept like the dead.”

“I don’t remember that, for obvious reasons.”

Dean laughs again, shaking his head. “I’d _known_ rather than just felt it for longer, Purgatory, maybe, or just before… But I sat up that night watching you sleep the fight off, and all I could think of was waking you up, kissing you, getting into the bed so I could hold you close, telling you that you could come home with me after all, and we’d deal with everything – all my stupid fucks ups – together. It would work somehow _because_ we were together, whatever the odds. I just – just had to take you home.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“I _know_. I thought I’d blown my only chance to have you, but nothing ever made you leave after that… Nothing.”

Cas is the one to kiss first this time, interrupting what threatened to be a dark spiral of thoughts into what had followed from that one night of deluding himself there might be a way to have everything he wanted but never daring to take it. To Dean’s relief when Cas pulls back from the chaste press against Dean’s lips, he says, “We don’t have to talk about this now. I understand.”

 “I know, mood killer, right?” Dean laughs, and only realises how sniffly he’s gotten when he does.

Cas runs a thumb under Dean’s eye, brushing away a tear, and finally he kisses him without stopping to talk.

Sense of time drifts away from Dean – even the sense of urgency they started making out with as they thought of all their lost time drifts to slower, lazier kisses as it becomes more apparent the universe isn’t going to tear them apart right that moment.

Dean is careful to let Cas dictate the pace, copying him keeping hands to shoulders, face, hair… Never daring to try any of the really dirt make out tricks Dean knows have always worked so well in the past for him hurrying a partner along to the fun part.

After everything they’ve ever been through, it’s almost comforting to share such a moment – intimate and chaste by Dean’s standards. He feels almost meditative, lost in having this much of Cas, to know how his lips feel, the taste of his mouth, the way Cas reverently touches him in turn, to be held so closely that even when Dean takes a moment and just buries his face in the joint of Cas’s neck and shoulder, and breathes, it feels as sensual as the kisses. Compared to some of his rough and tumble nights it’s the most emotionally fulfilling encounter he’s had – relief as much as passion; sheer happiness that he gets to actually experience this as more than a dream.

Dean even manages to forget for a moment just how frustrated he’s been all week, at least until – not for the first time – they shift restlessly to a better position for lip-locking, but this time with a breathy gasp from Cas. It’s a noise he’s never heard the angel make before but wants to hear every day for the rest of his life now. Realising where it comes from, the very specifically shaped pressure against his side where Cas leans into him, Dean’s hit with the warring urge to blurt something about “is than an angel blade or are you just pleased to see me?” or to scream with frustration that about the only thing left cockblocking them is Cas’s earlier hesitance, and, probably now just his own bloody-mindedness about respecting that, even when Cas had started this all by announcing he was DTF.

Cas clearly knows he’s been caught out, freezing awkwardly with a sudden leave-space-for-Jesus distance between them. He watches Dean uncertainly, mouth half-open but saying nothing; for looking so vulnerable and open when it comes to his messed up hair and flushed cheeks, Dean still feels like he’s never been harder to read. Dean has no idea how Cas expects him to react – or how he should now he’s stopped himself from the two worst instinctive reactions. Cas’s eyes track over his face, searching for the clue to what happens next – Dean sees fear there, he’s not sure what of but he immediately feels guilty that Cas can’t feel secure with him, even for something as simple as rolling around trading kisses.

He rests a hand on Cas’s face and strokes his cheek as a sign of good faith, before he makes himself pull back as well, sitting up and turning slightly away from Cas. “We’ve gotta stop or I don’t know how I’ll survive being all considerate to your needs n’all.” His own dick is taking exactly zero cues from anywhere but the lizard brain part of himself currently throwing a party that Cas is unambiguously into him. He tries to distract himself by beginning to unlace his boots.

He hears Cas sit up as well, and a hand skims from between his shoulder blades down to the small of his back in a way that makes Dean shiver and all the hairs stand up on his arms. “We don’t have to –”

“We do. I’m gonna regret anything else than falling asleep with you right here, ‘kay, and if you want, you watch over me or whatever part of that you’re so into, but I’m not pushing you for more. I meant it ‘bout going at your pace.” Dean yanks one of his boots off and turns it in his hands for a second as if it might tell him if he’s made the right choice, but it continues just being a shoe.

“What about you?” Cas’s voice makes Dean swallow hard, closing his eyes and savouring everything about the way Cas’s rougher than normal voice shapes around those words.

“What about me? I don’t care if you’ve been getting off since the apocalypse on the thought of shoving your tie in my mouth and fucking me through a mattress – if you don’t feel ready to actually do it _now_ then we don’t until you are… If you, uh… actually…”

“I only meant,” Cas says, now clearly the calmer one and also maybe laughing at him, “that you seem more wound up than I am…”

“I’m not wound up!” Dean throws his other boot across the room, accidentally with enough force to thunk hard against the far wall. Someone in the next room thumps back twice in annoyance, and Dean barks out a hysterical laugh.

He feels Cas’s arms around him from behind, pulling him to lie down with him again, and Dean flops back with a far too belated realisation that he’s let himself become the little spoon.

“Dean…” Cas rumbles in his ear, after allowing him a scant moment to will his frantic heartbeat to slow. “Do _you_ often think about my tie and –”

“Cas, for fuck’s sake, I didn’t pack enough underwear for you to dirty-talk me to sleep, shut _up_.”

Cas does, but Dean feels a rather unrepentant smile against the back of his neck, which shapes itself into a nonchalant kiss.

He lays awake for the next four and a half hours or so, knowing that he and Cas are both awake and listening to his heart thudding against his ribcage.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Uh – if I’d… When you suggested, back before we left on this case – the benefits thing… Did you hope if we – it would make me, you know… feelings.”
> 
> Technically it’s starting a conversation because words. Maybe not coherent ones.
> 
> Cas gets it though, replying with a rather sheepish smile, sad eyes. “I certainly hadn’t anticipated that we’d be holding hands within the week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if you noticed I changed the rating on this fic to M with the last update.   
> It does, however, remain at heart the crackiest of crack fics. I dedicate the final scene of this chapter to what Robbie Thompson was clearly trying to foreshadow with certain imagery in 11x04, "Baby", but due to leaving the show like a total asshole, was not around to finish and it has been left to me to resolve in my canon-compliant-for-one-more-week season 12 coda fic.

Dean wakes up just as frustrated, and no dreams to blame. Instead, it’s the angel still wrapped around him, probably also responsible for how Dean slept like the dead in the safe confine of his arms. Dean feels a rush of disbelief that Cas stayed the whole night, never even got bored and returned to bed with his laptop.

“I’ve been thinking,” Cas says, like it’s totally normal to know when the person you’re spooning has woken up before they even open their eyes. “After visit the scene of the ghost’s latest kill last night, I may have a link between the deaths after all.”

“No offence, but your pillow talk is crap,” Dean croaks.

“I’m not certain but both victims lived near the park in the centre of town,” Cas says, ignoring Dean, which he figures is fair enough. If Cas hasn’t got the hang of healthy emotional distance from the case, getting it done with is a priority to make Cas happy again. “I think the second victim may have walked through it on the way home from work, and most of the other victims had close connections to the centre of town.”

“Are you askin’ me on a date to the park?”

Cas hesitates, but the moment of panic Dean feels deflates at Cas’s matter of fact reply: “Yes, if you want to phrase it that way.”

Dean rolls over and kisses him deeply. He’s only acting annoyed when he discovers Cas ‘cured’ his morning breath when he finally gets out of bed and tries to think coherently again.

“Let’s go follow your lead then. It’s worth a shot.”

*

They go to the park undercover as nothing more than two guys who felt like a troll around it together.

Dean has a cup of coffee in the hand not shyly lacing fingers with Cas’s hand. There’s next to no one around in the mid-morning town during an overcast work day; no one to blame his jitters on – he’s just getting used to broadcasting a neon “Property of Castiel” sign in public.

They go slowly around the park, Cas stealing sips of coffee from Dean’s cardboard cup, or coffee flavoured kisses from his mouth. It’s definitely the most relaxed ghost hunting he’s ever taken part in.

Deceptively peaceful – the ‘cover’ of being out on a date is messing with Dean’s head, the only explanation he has for why he actually is the one to start the conversation after the thousandth time glancing down at their linked hands in wonder.

“Uh – if I’d… When you suggested, back before we left on this case – the benefits thing… Did you hope if we – it would make me, you know… _feelings_.”

Technically it’s starting a conversation because words. Maybe not coherent ones.

Cas gets it though, replying with a rather sheepish smile, sad eyes. “I certainly hadn’t anticipated that we’d be holding hands within the week.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“You are,” Cas says, looking at him with such genuine wonder Dean has to snatch his hand back to scratch his nose and try _not_ to even try to live up to whatever it is Cas is seeing in him.

Cas refuses to look away, puffing up with even more earnestness. “I had my own mistaken assumptions about your reservations on entering a relationship. I thought meeting you halfway with what you were able to share with –” Cas stops suddenly, staring at Dean looking so perplexed Dean feels he must have completely failed to disguise his – at this point ridiculous – shock at “relationship” being dropped casually in conversation.

Cas reaches over, and Dean’s eyes flicker half closed on instinct as Cas’s hand brushes past his face, but he doesn’t even touch Dean, really, just pulls back his hand holding something small and yellow that seemed to have been in Dean’s hair.

“Uh.”

“It’s a leaf,” Cas says, turning it in his fingers. “It just fell onto your head. And it’s haunted.”

“What the –”

Cas turns to look around the park, holding up the leaf to match to the trees lining the stretch of the park they’d stopped in.

It is barely autumn but some trees have started turning yellow – the part is mostly still green, but a younger tree, the trunk still thin enough that Dean could have wrapped a hand completely around it, has turned mostly golden and begun dropping similar little oval leaves.

Dean trails after Cas to inspect it. A small plaque is sunk into the mulch at its roots: “In commemoration of the seventy years anniversary of the founding… blah blah… sister town, blah blah… a cutting of their town’s famous tree… Cas – they sent a fucking _haunted tree_?”

Cas runs his fingers along a branch with young twigs on it. “This tree is hundreds of years old,” he agrees. “Or rather, it is a clone of a tree that is hundreds of years old.” There’s a look of mild awe on his face, but Dean gets weirdly smug that it’s nothing like the look Cas gets when he looks at Dean. And then Dean realises he’s getting competitive with a tree.

Not paying attention to Dean scowling at the tree, Cas is still analysing it: “I can sense the disruption in the magnetic field the ghost is causing, but it’s very faint. I suspect the ghost is much more firmly attached to the original tree.”

“So what are you thinking, we should salt and burn this tree?” Dean pulls his phone out, first to snap a picture of the plaque, then to dial Sam while that message is still sending. “Jokes on them – if it’s hundreds of years old, I hate to see what they’re going to have to deal with.”

*

Back at the motel, for the first time both sides research the same thing – how a ghost might have got attached to the huge tree in the town square, and who.

Dean stares at the picture Sam has sent him in return – a vast, ancient tree with a town hall type of building peeking out from behind it, and Mary posing like a tourist in front of it.

“This is ecological terrorism,” Sam says on speaker phone.

“The tree _happens_ to have been killing people, Sammy.”

“It’s not the – oh, never mind.”

Mary’s voice comes over the phone next, a bit more muffled across the table from Sam, in a no doubt uncannily similar motel to Dean and Cas’s. “It will be one of the dozens of people who were hanged from the tree when it was used for public executions back in the town’s early history. We can only hope that burning the bones of whoever is haunting this tree means we don’t have to hurt either part of it.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Sam says, childish tongue-pulling about a parent taking his side in the argument implied.

Dean rolls his eyes and Cas laughs – he’d spent the walk back arguing pro-tree to Dean’s increasingly fanciful speculations of how to kill it.

“So what should we do about our tree?” he fiddles with the twig they snapped off, turning it in his finger, half-hoping the ghost would show up just so they’d have something to fight. “I bet salting the ground around it isn’t going to go over so well.”

“Drive out to help us,” Mary says, her voice suggesting it’s not up for debate.

Dean glances across the table at Cas, who has the look away, colour creeping along his cheekbones, caught thinking the same thing. Dean tries it anyway. “What if Cas and I just… stay here… keep an eye on our tree.”

“We will be able to tell if the trees are no longer haunted from our tree here – and if burning the bones doesn’t work, all four of us might be needed to deal with a _giant haunted tree_ that’s strangling people.”

“Well…” Sam, who was not getting parental sarcasm at full blast, interjects, and Dean’s heart lifts: “The tree isn’t actually strangling people. It’s not the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter.”

“ _Wow_ you’re a geek sometimes.”

“Hurry up and get on the road so you can say that to my face.”

“… Your face,” Dean shoots back, and hangs up before Mary can chastise him for his comebacks. He sighs and looks at Cas again; the angel is unhelpfully smiling at him with a very fond look. “This has been such a waste of our time.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Cas says, and reaches across the table to squeeze his hand.

*

Dean hands Cas the car keys, and tells him to drive carefully.

He can’t be bothered dealing with all the nightmare scenarios of having to steal heavy goods vehicles to uproot the tree in the middle of a town without anyone noticing, or finding a spell to get lightning to strike it (lightning would kill a ghost, probably?). And also Cas’s confident driving is awesome and all, but watching his face as he tried to back the car out of Dean’s expert parking had been the most entertaining thing he’d seen all week, and he’s in the mood now for Cas’s grandma driving.

The day passes slowly in the good sort of way. They make totally necessary stops for gas, and a late lunch that drags on to mid-afternoon when they lose track of time over quiet conversation and staring across the table at each other with no reason to awkwardly look away. They get stuck behind a tractor for a while, and then dawdle through the rest of the county for the sake of a particularly entertaining radio host that Cas got attached to. They’re nearly a hundred miles still from their destination at sundown, the time when cemeteries close and hunters sneak into them to desecrate some graves. There’s no reason _not_ to pile onto their already considerable lateness and stop to watch the sunset.

“You _barely_ need two people to dig a grave,” Dean says, passing Cas a beer as they lean on the side of the car. “And Mom and Sam are scarily competent hunters. And she’s still got that new resurrection feeling before you do your back in digging a grave, so she’s worth two of any of us.”

“I could dig a grave without hurting myself,” Cas says, affronted.

“I’m holding you to that.”

Cas scowls, realising what he’s nominated himself for.

“Honestly,” Dean says, “Ever since I met you, any time I dig a grave I think of how you’d find it annoyingly easy and wish you were there.”

“You’re not a romantic soul.”

Dean bursts out laughing, until he catches Cas still watching him with an uncertain expression that doesn’t match his sarcasm. Dean sighs, mood sinking along with the sun. “Cas, you know I want you around for more than your badass super strength, right? Or your healing, or in the past your wings… I’d still want you around if you were human and useless like us.”

“Of course,” Cas says, rolling his eyes at Dean like it’s horribly obvious and Dean’s being the drama queen here. Dean still catches him smiling to himself as he looks away to examine the last of the sunset with all his intensity.

It gives Dean a restless feeling under his skin, a sense that they need to move on, now, or who knows what would happen. “Come on, Cas, let’s get back on the road. They’ll probably get suspicious if we show up a whole day late.”

Cas re-joins him in the car, but doesn’t start the engine. “If we were a ‘whole day late’ we’d have to spend the night somewhere.”

Dean swallows, finding his mouth unaccountably dry. “We would, wouldn’t we?”

“Sam would probably enjoy beating us to completing this hunt, after how much you have been mocking him this week.”

“You’re right… Hit the gas already.”

“They’re almost certainly going to finish the job tonight without any need of our help. I could text Sam and say that we’ve been stuck behind tractors all the way. You wouldn’t even have to tell him.”

“He’d understand that I had to take my Baby through a carwash before she could be seen again in public,” Dean says (having already morosely rubbed at dirt splatters on her hood when they stopped for their sunset watching).

Cas drops his head to laugh to himself. He has the pale evening sky behind him, where the sun had been not long before; his silhouette catches his sharp side profile features for a moment in a way which catches Dean out with surprise at just how breath-taking Cas is when he doesn’t have to repress and deny everything when he realises he’s staring. Even in the darkness, when Cas looks back up it’s clear how his expression has set: “Get in the back of the car.”

“What –”

Cas lurches across the space between them, gathering Dean’s face between his hands, and kisses him deeply. He only lets go when Dean moans into the kiss and tries to pull Cas even closer.

“Get in the back,” Cas repeats, still so close his lips brush against Dean’s as he speaks.

“Y-yeah, o-okay.” Dean fumbles behind him – he grew up in this car and now he doesn’t know where the door handle is.

Outside the car he takes a deep breath of the cool night air; the lay-by they shoes to watch the sunset from is so far from anything, the stars are perfectly clear above them – in the flat countryside, he can’t see lights anywhere all the way to the horizon.

The other car door shuts behind him, making Dean jump, and he scrambles to join Cas.

He’s pinned against the door in another kiss as soon as he’s closed the door behind him, and it feels completely self-defeating to do anything but kiss back. Cas urges him to stretch across the back seat, and Dean finds himself pinned down and being kissed like the world depends on it.

He wouldn’t be Dean if he wasn’t a _little_ self-defeating, though – Cas lets him breathe for a moment, and Dean turns his head to avoid the next kiss. “Cas, wait, are you _sure_ –”

“Dean, please _stop_ trying to accommodate me.” Since Dean’s avoiding his mouth, Cas sits back to start pulling at Dean’s jeans, in case he’d forgotten why people would urgently relocate to the backseat of the car mid-conversation.

Dean catches his hands while Cas is still fumbling with the button – probably not helped by how much tighter at the front than usual Dean’s pants are. “I just – I thought you didn’t…” It’s _painfully_ surreal to be stuck on this side of the argument, from not quite believing Cas actually wants to do this with him to telling Cas to _stop_ trying to have sex with him.

Cas rolls his eyes. “Some in Heaven have _disowned me_ specifically because they think we’re sleeping together, you know. My interest in you is a cautionary tale to them. If we’re going to – to be _close_ then I want this to be something we do. Besides, I’m not _dis_ interested. It’s not my main interest in you, but I’m curious and perfectly happy to indulge in this. Which we could have been doing much sooner if you weren’t so scared.”

He’s not an idiot – Dean knows Cas is baiting him with that last comment. On the other hand, baiting him for reasons Dean can get behind. He pulls himself up to sit nose to nose with Cas, enjoying the rather nervous, contrite look he has after levelling that accusation. He enjoys kissing the look from Cas’s face more.

It’s a great effort to make his nervous thoughts shut off for a while, but there’s something almost meditative in the frustration of trying to wrestle a trenchcoat off a guy who won’t let go of your face, and is sitting on the end of the coat as well. He final convinces Cas to sit back and shrug it off himself, and Dean goes straight to fumbling with Cas’s shirt buttons, determined to finally get his hands on bare skin.

Honestly, he’s been lusting after him openly all week… Scared? _Really_ , Cas?

He wisely does not say it out loud where Cas could roll his eyes again. With complaints silenced Cas clearly wants to get on with things before Dean can start panicking again, and those thoughts float away as Cas presses open-mouthed kisses along Dean’s jaw and down his throat, his hands gliding down his chest and stomach to pull at his shirt hem, shifting his weight to encourage Dean to grind up against the thigh he has wedged between Dean’s legs.

The back seat is too cramped, Cas just laughs when Dean suggests they get a blanket out the trunk and goes back to sucking hickeys onto Dean’s collarbone, and they’ve scrabbled so ineffectually at each other’s clothes Dean still has one boot on and his jeans trapped around that ankle after Cas got bored with Dean’s layers… it’s maybe the best moment of his life.

Cas breathes Dean’s name as a question and Dean isn’t entirely sure what he’s asking but agrees at once by groaning Cas’s name in answer. A moment later Cas’s hand is around Dean’s dick and he almost cracks his head on the car window, throwing it back in surprise. He’s out of his depth and pretty much along for the ride after that – clutching at Cas’s shoulders, communicating only in a string of swearing he hopes is encouraging when Cas takes them both in hand. After that Dean is lost – he doesn’t even know how much longer it is before he sobs Cas’s name and tumbles over the edge, except that Cas seems to have been waiting for that as his cue to do the same.

A long moment of silence follows except for their heavy breathing; Dean aimlessly strokes Cas’s back and shoulders with shaking hands, and even in the dark it’s not hard to see Cas staring down at him with the most awed and besotted expression to date. Dean has just enough self-awareness left to feel the first nervous clench of his stomach thinking about the long term consequences of what’s on offer here.

Then Cas glances up a bit, and Dean follows his gaze to the misted over window above his head, heavy with an unbroken sheet of pale condensation. He hasn’t even un-muddled his thoughts enough to speak yet, but Cas’s expression, caught in the faintest of light from outside, is solemn and determined as he lets go of his grip on Dean’s hair with what Dean has been charitably thinking of as his free hand, and places his hand palm flat against the window. He drags it down with a squeak of protest from the glass, leaving a dark but obvious handprint in its place.

It takes Dean maybe half a second too long to get the reference as Cas lays back down to snuggle against him with a look of total satisfaction on his face, and then Dean loses it, laughing so hard he almost shakes Cas off of him into the footwell.

“It seemed important to get the scene right,” Cas says, when Dean finally subsides and has wiped his eyes and let Cas settle down again.

“You’re a freakin’ dork, and if I wasn’t so comfortable I’d start drawin’ dicks on the glass.”

Cas ignores Dean’s comment, nuzzling against him again and somehow getting heavier, losing all interest in anything but being clingy and warm. Around about when he puts a hand on Dean’s face just for safekeeping Dean probably would have got suspicious Cas was using angel mojo on him to knock him out instead of just being affectionate, but Dean is already asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Should we just… tell them that we’re all, you know, in love and shit now. Once we’re home and all.”
> 
> Cas raises an eyebrow at him and it’s Dean’s turn to complain, “What?!”
> 
> “You really aren’t very romantic, are you?”
> 
> “We _cuddled_ ,” Dean objects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *finger guns*

Dean dreams of a forest, which seems like a really important detail that definitely means something really important that he’s probably just forgotten. He also dreams round two with Cas right there at the foot of a huge tree, which is distracting enough but then he dreams that he asks Cas if it’s really a normal dream or what, but dream-Cas’s mouth is way too occupied to answer. Dean can’t tell if it’s his own weird feeling about Cas in his head giving him a dream _about_ his uncertainty about Cas getting into his dreams or the real deal. He wakes up at the crack of dawn confused and turned on and with the real Cas all over him as soon as he knows Dean is awake.

Afterwards, Cas waves him so clean he doesn’t even have the grimy slept in a car _without_ sticky sex feeling; it guilts him into sitting up to try and find his missing items of clothing, without completely disentangling from Cas.

“Can you pass me my phone? We’ve got to be in deep shit by now…”

“Your phone was vibrating with text alerts frequently not long after you went to sleep.”

“Oh, God, I hope they’re –”

“They’re fine.” Cas rolls his eyes at Dean’s look. “I have a phone too, you know.”

“Were you lying on top of me texting all night?”

“I only checked my messages. Once I ascertained Mary and Sam had no need of us I thought I’d let you sleep. I thought it best to wait for your input on what to tell them.”

“And then you played with stupid apps all night.”

Cas freezes and looks cornered, until Dean laughs and he relaxes and smiles along with him. Dean unlocks his phone and takes the excuse to peer over the top of it at Cas while pretending to be reading his many missed messages. Cas is sitting there on the back seat wearing just his unbuttoned shirt and his socks still like it’s completely socially acceptable to sit around being that distracting. The morning sun is streaming in from the window Dean still has his back to, and Cas still has a faint smile on his face, which turns to confusion at the sound of the camera shutter effect noise on Dean’s phone. Dean grins at Cas what he hopes is cheekily, but Cas seems to lack the self-consciousness to grab the phone and try to delete anything, so Dean just snaps a second picture where Cas is looking right at him, bemused but fond. He opens his messages.

Aside from worried about where Dean and Cas have got to, Mary and Sam are more than fine – the salt and burn was enough to convince the murderous ghost to move on; the tree no longer gives off the faintest sign of being haunted; Sam and Mary are heading home, with a clear threat to come look for Dean and Cas if they don’t get in contact by breakfast.

Even with Sam’s early rising habits they’re mostly in the clear for that, so Dean shoots off a text about getting stuck behind every tractor in the state before crashing out at the first motel they came across and accidentally sleeping through the night and missing all these messages. It’s a series of half-truths and blatant lies.

He looks up at Cas and frowns.

“What?” Cas says at once, pre-emptively grumpy.

“Should we just… tell them that we’re all, you know, in love and shit now. Once we’re home and all.”

Cas raises an eyebrow at him and it’s Dean’s turn to complain, “What?!”

“You _really_ aren’t very romantic, are you?”

“We _cuddled_ ,” Dean objects. Cas just laughs at him and throws Dean’s plaid shirt in his face.

*

Mary’s house is really starting to feel like returning home, Dean thinks, now he’s beginning to get over the stomach-dropping feeling of _my mom is in there_ every time he looks at it. It’s a different sort of feeling from the comfort of driving up the Bunker and knowing the great shower and his comfortable bed are waiting for him – perhaps a stronger version of the familiarity they felt driving up to Bobby’s house once. It’s unnerving just to have several points of reference to compare for different feelings about home… An almost uncomfortably warm fuzzy feeling on top of all the shy smiles he’s traded with Cas as they drove back.

The front door is unlocked, and stepping through the threshold, Dean can smell Chinese take out, which is probably the equivalent domestic smell in his life to walking into a house where someone had just baked a roast dinner.

Eating the food comes with a round of good-natured mocking from Sam before they’re allowed to so much as pick up any chopsticks. Somewhere along the way on their side of the adventure, Mary’s bullied him into getting a haircut of noticeably over an inch, so Dean gets a few shots back between mouthfuls of crispy duck. Cas sits beside him on the sofa, crowded into Dean’s side, and picks at a piece of sesame toast.

The attention in the room quickly shifts to be all on Sam, telling their side of the story, so Dean hopes no one notices him realise there was only the one piece of toast left by the time they got there, and steal it out of Cas’s hand right when he’s raised it to his mouth to apparently take the decisive bite and quit playing with it. Dean may have forgotten to account for Mary’s presence in the room, curled up in one of the dusty armchairs with a plate of rice, and he deals with it by just not looking that way until he hopes she’d forget.

“… And then when Mom dug down and reached the coffin,” Sam was saying, “the ghost appeared right in the grave with her, and before I could even yell anything, Mom wings around and _decks_ him with the shovel – she would have taken his head clean off if he’s been alive still. But then he appeared behind me when he reformed while I was getting the gasoline, and he had this gross ghostly rope around my neck, hauling me up a nearby tree…” Sam pulls on his collar to show some gruesome rope burns where he’d nearly been hanged. Dean winces and touches his own collar in an unconscious sympathetic gesture. Sam’s eyes follow the movement and widen just a bit as he does a quiet double take and loses the thread of what he was saying – Dean remembers too late that they’d really not thought to worry about hickeys before they walked in the door, and struggles to keep a poker face and not immediately dive into his collar like a turtle retracting its neck.

“You’re alive and well,” Cas points out, picking up the story again. “How did you get out of that?”

“Uh – Mom grabbed the gas and did the salt and burn before he could strangle me to death. Did you have a run in with the ghost before we got him?”

_Shit_.

Cas scowls at Sam while Dean slowly feels his entire life force drain away through his feet into the cracks in the floorboards. “The ghost was manifesting in two places at once,” he tells Sam, like he is being extremely slow. “We took a sample of the tree with us and –”

Dean can _feel_ Mary staring at him now as well.

He laughs awkwardly, like Cas is going to reveal some really moronic adventure he had, and struggles to his feet to start haphazardly gathering up all the boxes and plates strewn around the room. “Well what’s important is the ghost is gone, and we have a sort of break from all the running around for a bit. Since Cas and I got here late and all, I guess that means _we_ have to do the dishes – c’mon, babe, help me carry all this into the kitchen!”

Once they’re in the safety of the next room, Dean leans on the counter and dares to breathe. Cas deposits his armful of cardboard boxes directly into the sink, and sidles up to Dean, leaning into him to steal a brief kiss.

“We gotta tell them, Cas. Mom’s gonna kill me if we keep this secret forever. I can see it in her eyes, she _knows_ …”

He stops, confused, as Cas gestures to the other room.

“You wanna go tell them now –”

This time Cas shushes him with a hand over his mouth, before moving it to put two fingers on Dean’s forehead. At once the sound from the next room is amplified like Dean’s sitting right back at the sofa, which feels really sneaky considering Sam’s laugh is muffled as if into the back of his hand to stop it carrying to the kitchen.

“No, I don’t _think_ they –” There’s an uncomfortably long pause where Dean can’t imagine what Sam’s face is doing, for all the years he’s known him. “Holy crap, how long _have_ they been together?”

“That’s what I was asking you!”

Sam snorts, loud enough Dean thinks he hears it regularly too. “Right, Dean sharing something that personal with me. I don’t think he even ever meant to directly tell me he – uh, you…”

“It’s okay, Sam. One of the first things Dean said to me while trying to explain how the world’s changed in the years I missed was that gay marriage was legal. It seemed important to him, so… I made my peace with it. I suppose with hindsight I’m not surprised.”

“Wait. Wait wat wait – do you think he and Cas are _married_?”

Cas seems to think they’ve heard enough and cuts Dean off from the eavesdropping. He looks close to laughing and that fact alone overwhelms Dean’s horror at what he’s heard, from Sam’s laughing to Mary’s rather lukewarm acceptance. It’s okay – Cas thinks it’s funny, and it actually kind of is. He pushes a smile onto his own face, and squeezes Cas’s shoulder.

“So, when we go tell them, how long do you want to have been secretly married for?”


End file.
